Aims. Our goal is to study the different morphologies associated to the interaction of the stellar winds of AGB stars and red supergiants with the interstellar medium (ISM) to follow the fate of the ...circumstellar matter injected into the interstellar medium. Methods. Far-infrared Herschel/PACS images at 70 and 160 μm of a sample of 78 Galactic evolved stars are used to study the (dust) emission structures developing out of stellar wind-ISM interaction. In addition, two-fluid hydrodynamical simulations of the coupled gas and dust in wind-ISM interactions are used for comparison with the observations. Results. Four distinct classes of wind-ISM interaction (i.e. “fermata”, “eyes”, “irregular”, and “rings”) are identified, and basic parameters affecting the morphology are discussed. We detect bow shocks for ~40% of the sample and detached rings for ~20%. The total dust and gas mass inferred from the observed infrared emission is similar to the stellar mass loss over a period of a few thousand years, while in most cases it is less than the total ISM mass potentially swept-up by the wind-ISM interaction. De-projected stand-off distances (R0) – defined as the distance between the central star and the nearest point of the interaction region – of the detected bow shocks (“fermata” and “eyes”) are derived from the PACS images and compared to previous results, model predictions, and the simulations. All observed bow shocks have stand-off distances smaller than 1 pc. Observed and theoretical stand-off distances are used together to independently derive the local ISM density. Conclusions. Both theoretical (analytical) models and hydrodynamical simulations give stand-off distances for adopted stellar properties that are in good agreement with the measured de-projected stand-off distance of wind-ISM bow shocks. The possible detection of a bow shock – for the distance-limited sample – appears to be governed by its physical size as set roughly by the stand-off distance. In particular the star’s peculiar space velocity and the density of the ISM appear decisive in detecting emission from bow shocks or detached rings. In most cases the derived ISM densities concur with those typical of the warm neutral and ionised gas in the Galaxy, though some cases point towards the presence of cold diffuse clouds. Tentatively, the “eyes” class objects are associated to (visual) binaries, while the “rings” generally do not appear to occur for M-type stars, only for C or S-type objects that have experienced a thermal pulse.
Compressed Sensing in Astronomy Bobin, J.; Starck, J.-L.; Ottensamer, R.
IEEE journal of selected topics in signal processing,
10/2008, Letnik:
2, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Recent advances in signal processing have focused on the use of sparse representations in various applications. A new field of interest based on sparsity has recently emerged: compressed sensing . ...This theory is a new sampling framework that provides an alternative to the well-known Shannon sampling theory. In this paper, we investigate how compressed sensing (CS) can provide new insights into astronomical data compression. We first give a brief overview of the compressed sensing theory which provides very simple coding process with low computational cost, thus favoring its use for real-time applications often found onboard space mission. In practical situations, owing to particular observation strategies (for instance, raster scans) astronomical data are often redundant; in that context, we point out that a CS-based compression scheme is flexible enough to account for particular observational strategies. Indeed, we show also that CS provides a new fantastic way to handle multiple observations of the same field view, allowing us to recover low level details, which is impossible with standard compression methods. This kind of CS data fusion concept could lead to an elegant and effective way to solve the problem ESA is faced with, for the transmission to the earth of the data collected by PACS, one of the instruments onboard the Herschel spacecraft which will launched in late 2008/early 2009. We show that CS enables to recover data with a spatial resolution enhanced up to 30% with similar sensitivity compared to the averaging technique proposed by ESA.
MESS (Mass-loss of Evolved StarS) is a guaranteed time key program that uses the PACS and SPIRE instruments on board the Herschel space observatory to observe a representative sample of evolved ...stars, that include asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and post-AGB stars, planetary nebulae and red supergiants, as well as luminous blue variables, Wolf-Rayet stars and supernova remnants. In total, of order 150 objects are observed in imaging and about 50 objects inspectroscopy. This paper describes the target selection and target list, and the observing strategy. Key science projects are described, and illustrated using results obtained during Herschel’s science demonstration phase. Aperture photometry is given for the 70 AGB and post-AGB stars observed up to October 17, 2010, which constitutes the largest single uniform database of far-IR and sub-mm fluxes for late-type stars.
The Mass loss of Evolved StarS (MESS) sample offers a selection of 78 asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and red supergiants (RSGs) observed with the PACS photometer on-board Herschel at 70 mu m and ...160 mu m. For most of these objects, the dusty AGB wind is not spherically symmetric and the wind shape can be subdivided into four classes. In the present paper we concentrate on the influence of a companion on the morphology of the stellar wind. Literature was searched to find binaries in the MESS sample, which were subsequently linked to their wind-morphology class to assert that the binaries are not distributed equally among the classes. In the second part of the paper we concentrate on the circumstellar environment of the two prominent objects R Aqr and W Aql. Each shows a characteristic signature of a companion interaction with the stellar wind. For the symbiotic star R Aqr, PACS revealed two perfectly opposing arms that in part reflect the previously observed ring-shaped nebula in the optical. However, from the far-IR there is evidence that the emitting region is elliptical rather than circular. The outline of the wind of W Aql seems to follow a large Archimedean spiral formed by the orbit of the companion but also shows strong indications of an interaction with the interstellar medium. We investigated the nature of the companion of W Aql and found that the magnitude of the orbital period supports the size of the spiral outline.
Herschel’s view into Mira’s head Mayer, A.; Jorissen, A.; Kerschbaum, F. ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
07/2011, Letnik:
531
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Herschel’s PACS instrument observed the environment of the binary system Mira Ceti in the 70 and 160 μm bands. These images reveal bright structures shaped as five broken arcs and fainter filaments ...in the ejected material of Mira’s primary star, the famous AGB star o Ceti. The overall shape of the IR emission around Mira deviates significantly from the expected alignment with Mira’s exceptionally high space velocity. The observed broken arcs are neither connected to each other nor are they of a circular shape; they stretch over angular ranges of 80 to 100 degrees. By comparing Herschel and GALEX data, we found evidence for the disruption of the IR arcs by the fast outflow visible in both Hα and the far UV. Radial intensity profiles are derived, which place the arcs at distances of 6–85″ (550−8000 AU) from the binary. Mira’s IR environment appears to be shaped by the complex interaction of Mira’s wind with its companion, the bipolar jet, and the ISM.
For the Mass-loss of Evolved StarS (MESS) programme, the unprecedented spatial resolution of the PACS photometer on board the Herschel Space Observatory was employed to map the dusty environments of ...asymptotic giant branch (AGB) and red supergiant (RSG) stars. Among the morphologically heterogeneous sample, a small fraction of targets is enclosed by spherically symmetric detached envelopes. Based on observations in the 70 μm and 160 μm wavelength bands, we investigated the surroundings of the two carbon semiregular variables S Sct and RT Cap, which both show evidence for a history of highly variable mass-loss. S Sct exhibits a bright, spherically symmetric detached shell, 138″ in diameter and co-spatial with an already known CO structure. Moreover, weak emission is detected at the outskirts, where the morphology seems indicative of a mild shaping by interaction of the wind with the interstellar medium, which is also supported by the stellar space motion. Two shells are found around RT Cap that were not known so far in either dust emission or from molecular line observations. The inner shell with a diameter of 188″ shows an almost immaculate spherical symmetry, while the outer ~5′ structure is more irregularly shaped. MoD, a modification of the DUSTY radiative transfer code, was used to model the detached shells. Dust temperatures, shell dust masses, and mass-loss rates are derived for both targets.
Detached circumstellar dust shells are detected around three carbon variables using Herschel-PACS. Two of them are already known on the basis of their thermal CO emission and two are visible as ...extensions in IRAS imaging data. By model fits to the new data sets, physical sizes, expansion timescales, dust temperatures, and more are deduced. A comparison with existing molecular CO material shows a high degree of correlation for TT Cyg and U Ant but a few distinct differences with other observables are also found.
The Herschel Space Observatory of ESA was launched in May 2009 and has been in operation ever since. From its distant orbit around L2, it needs to transmit a huge quantity of information through a ...very limited bandwidth. This is especially true for the PACS imaging camera, which needs to compress its data far more than what can be achieved with lossless compression. This is currently solved by including lossy averaging and rounding steps onboard. Recently, a new theory called compressed sensing has emerged from the statistics community. This theory makes use of the sparsity of natural (or astrophysical) images to optimize the acquisition scheme of the data needed to estimate those images. Thus, it can lead to high compression factors. A previous article by Bobin et al. (2008, IEEE J. Selected Topics Signal Process., 2, 718) has shown how the new theory could be applied to simulated Herschel/PACS data to solve the compression requirement of the instrument. In this article, we show that compressed sensing theory can indeed be successfully applied to actual Herschel/PACS data and significantly improves over the standard pipeline. To fully use the redundancy present in the data, we perform a full sky-map estimation and decompression at the same time, which cannot be done in most other compression methods. We also demonstrate that the various artifacts affecting the data (pink noise and glitches, whose behavior is a priori not very compatible with compressed sensing) can also be handled in this new framework. Finally, we compare the methods from the compressed sensing scheme and data acquired with the standard compression scheme. We discuss improvements that can be made on Earth for the creation of sky maps from the data.
The asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars X Her and TX Psc have been imaged at 70 and 160 μm with the PACS instrument onboard the Herschel satellite, as part of the large MESS (Mass loss of Evolved ...StarS) guaranteed time key program. The images reveal an axisymmetric extended structure with its axis oriented along the space motion of the stars. This extended structure is very likely to be shaped by the interaction of the wind ejected by the AGB star with the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM). As predicted by numerical simulations, the detailed structure of the wind-ISM interface depends upon the relative velocity between star+wind and the ISM, which is large for these two stars (108 and 55 km s-1 for X Her and TX Psc, respectively). In both cases, there is a compact blob upstream whose origin is not fully elucidated, but that could be the signature of some instability in the wind-ISM shock. Deconvolved images of X Her and TX Psc reveal several discrete structures along the outermost filaments, which could be Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices. Finally, TX Psc is surrounded by an almost circular ring (the signature of the termination shock?) that contrasts with the outer, more structured filaments. A similar inner circular structure seems to be present in X Her as well, albeit less clearly.
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